Cultural Genocide: Canada’s Darkest Secret

Posted on October 23, 2018

Canada’s Darkest Secret

Al Jazeera (2017)

Film Review

This documentary concerns Canada’s infamous “boarding schools,” a program for indigenous Canadian children started in 1876 by Canada’s first prime minister John McDonald. Under this system, native children were forcibly removed (and in some cases kidnapped) from their families to attend religious boarding schools. The goal was to forcibly totally separate the children’s from their families’ native language and culture.
The government wanted access to mineral deposits on treaty lands. Rather than going to war with their indigenous population, they stole their children to extinguish them as communities and nations.
The last boarding school closed in 1996.
Most of the film consists of interviews with boarding school survivors. They talk of being forbidden to speak their native language, harsh beatings for minor infractions, a continuous diet of mushy oatmeal, lack of heating in winter and frequent sexual abuse. The death rate for children who attended these boarding schools was 24-40%.
In 1980, a group of boarding school survivors began a long court action that in 2008 resulted in the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The goal of the TRC hearings, which went on for seven years, was for boarding school survivors to document their years of abuse and trauma for posterity.

how the words of #ICWA made them feel

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Beyond high fives and selfies … Indian youth explore policy issues

“The Indian Child Welfare act was created in order to protect the best interest of Indian Children and to promote the stability and security of tribal communities and families. We as youth leaders know that our identity; is who we are, is within our culture, and within the tribal community that raises us. Our membership and blood quantum has never defined us as members of our tribal communities. To us, we are raised by tribal communities, because we learn not just from our family but from the community as a whole. They teach us our languages, our traditions, they show us who we are as American Indian/Alaskan Native youth, that is a right every American Indian/Alaskan Native child should have. They should not be taken from their tribal community, because when they are, a piece of our culture is lost.”

Chickasaw Nation Documentary Wins Heartland Emmy Award

“And Our Mothers Cried” vividly brings to life the Indian boarding school era of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. For several generations of Native American children, including some Chickasaws, attending boarding school meant separation from their families and indoctrination into a culture that wasn’t their own. The schools, which were guided by the infamous slogan, “Kill the Indian. Save the Man,” prohibited most students from speaking their own language and emphasized labor-intensive trades that would assimilate them into white culture through military-type institutions.
The documentary presents a stark contrast between these schools and schools established and operated by the Chickasaw Nation, which were designed to prepare Chickasaw children to compete in a rapidly changing world. “And Our Mothers Cried” presents compelling stories from some of the Chickasaw elders who lived through the boarding school era. Their experiences weave a complex story of sorrow and survival, but also one of hope and resilience from a time when tribal governments and culture were under attack.

Click here to watch the EMMY® Award-winning “Winter Fire—And Our Mothers Cried.”

READ MORE: Chickasaw Nation Documentary Wins Heartland Emmy Award - Native News Online

Senator Warren's DNA #ICWA

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Native perspective: Sherry Treppa: Why #ICWA is critical to the health of native children and tribal communities

Excerpt:

Congress passed the ICWA in 1978 in an attempt to reverse the ravages that forced separation of Native children from their families wrought on Indian people. In Native cultures, families are the center of our communities, and children are sacred gifts from the Creator. Judge O’Connor’s ruling not only threatens our future – it outright discounts generations of historical anguish. The ruling also ignores the rights of tribes as sovereign governments. The ICWA only applies to children from federally recognized tribes, and tribes – as sovereign governments – are the only legal authority to determine the membership of a tribe. Destroying a tribe’s ability to speak out for its future – our children – undermines the modern efforts of tribal government to overcome hundreds of years oppression because of the U.S. government’s aggressive control over every aspect of tribal citizens’ lives, including our relationships with our own children.

Sherry Treppa is chair of the Habematolel Pomo tribe of Upper Lake, Calif.

READ: here

Where are they buried?

Thousands of Canada’s indigenous children died in church-run boarding schools

Armed with everything from school attendance records to drones, researchers across Canada are racing to shed light on a bleak part of the country’s history: How many indigenous children died at residential schools, and where are their unmarked graves? From 1883 to 1998, nearly 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families and sent to the government-funded, church-run boarding schools in an attempt to assimilate them. Once there, they were frequently neglected and abused. What happened at the schools was akin to “cultural genocide,” concluded a 2015 report from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It also found that at least 3,200 students died at residential schools over those 115 years — a much higher rate than for students elsewhere in Canada — though the commission contended that the number was probably much higher and merited further investigation.

The religious organizations that operated the schools — the Anglican Church of Canada, Presbyterian Church in Canada, United Church of Canada, Jesuits of English Canada and some Catholic groups — in 2015 expressed regret for the “well-documented” abuses. The Catholic Church has never offered an official apology, something that Trudeau and others have repeatedly called for.

READ: Thousands of Canada’s indigenous children died in church-run boarding schools. Where are they buried? - The Washington Post

Constant Attacks on ICWA | Democracy Now

NAJA Calls Out LA Times for Anti-Indian Child Welfare Act Op-ed Full of “Anti-Indian Propaganda”

Naomi Schaefer Riley

Published October 20, 2018

NORMAN, Okla.  —  The Native American Journalist Association, based in Norman, Oklahoma sent a letter critical of the Los Angeles Times publishing an op-ed that allowed a writer to call for the elimination of the landmark 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act.

Here is the letter sent to the Los Angeles Times:

The Native American Journalists Association is disappointed in the lack of due diligence demonstrated by the Los Angeles Times in publishing the op-ed “Does the Indian Child Welfare Act protect tribal interests at the expense of children?” We call on the organization and the opinion section to review their policies and practices in light of its unchecked dissemination of anti-Indian propaganda.

The Times published an Oct. 12 op-ed by Naomi Schaefer Riley in which Schaefer Riley advocates for the elimination of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) by deliberately misrepresenting the law to readers – a tactic organizations labeled hate groups have used in an attempt to undermine the law.

NAJA is dismayed that the Times would publish opinions that align so closely with views held by established anti-Indian hate groups and calls on the paper to review their op-ed policies and journalistic standards. It is chilling that a revered organization like the Times would lack the ability to identify the difference between informed opinion on important and consequential Indigenous issues, and talking points advocated by anti-Indian hate groups based on stereotypes and misinformation.

For this reason, NAJA has published a guide on best practices when reporting on ICWA cases to provide newsrooms with the tools to provide readers with accurate and contextual coverage on the topic. NAJA consistently advocates for consultation with tribal leaders and authorities. Had the Times’ editors consulted any tribal leaders, they would have learned that tribal nations within the United States do NOT support the elimination of ICWA.

NAJA also recommends that reporters never refer to blood quantum when covering ICWA cases. The law applies to citizens of tribal nations as determined by that nation, not federally imposed standards like degree of Indian blood. Measuring the amount of Indian blood a child has is an inherent act of racism. However, Schaefer Riley's op-ed hinges on this idea then leans on stereotypes such as poverty, domestic abuse and drug use to paint a disparaging picture of Indigenous families to suggest that those communities lack the ability to provide children a good life.

We encourage the Times to follow the journalistic practices established by Indigenous journalists and endorsed by NAJA to provide ethical and culturally sensitive coverage to readers, instead of providing a platform for hate groups and their sympathizers to promulgate anti-Indian propaganda.

NAJA Calls Out LA Times for Anti-Indian Child Welfare Act Op-ed Full of “Anti-Indian Propaganda” by Levi Rickert

Namwayut: we are all one. Truth and reconciliation in Canada | Canada is...

The removal of Indian children continues to be a national crisis #ICWA

We've said it before and we'll say it again. Children raised by their families and tribal communities is in the best interest of Native children. #ICWA #NativeChildrenhttps://t.co/HeEzlOApX5

— NICWA (@NativeChildren) October 12, 2018

The Nation’s First Family Separation Policy 

Forty years ago, three in 10 Indian children were taken from their families.
October 9, 2018 | Christie Renick

The United States’ first family separation policy removed one-third of all American Indian children from their families and tribes. 

In the late 1960s, while employed by the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA), a New York-based attorney named Bertram Hirsch was sent to North Dakota to assist with a kinship dispute case on behalf of the Spirit Lake Tribe. Child welfare workers were forcibly removing children from family members and placing them in white homes, sometimes out of state. One grandmother had even been jailed after refusing to give up her grandchildren.
At the time, Hirsch says, he had no idea that an alarming number of American Indian children were being taken from their families and permanently placed in homes with white parents. But as he worked on the Spirit Lake case, he began to understand the scope of the problem. And by the time 1969 rolled around, he and the AAIA were deeply engaged in a nationwide data collection project that had him contacting every foster care or adoption agency and institution he could find. He surveyed the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which had the authority to place children at that time, and state social services departments as well as juvenile probation facilities.
Hirsch’s research found that somewhere between 25 and 35 percent of all American Indian children had been placed in adoptive homes, foster homes or institutions. 

Around 90 percent of those children were being raised by non-Indians. 

Many would never see their biological families again.

By the end of 1978, Hirsch had conducted his audit twice. Congressional commissions had convened in Washington numerous times, gathering hundreds of hours of testimony on the government’s egregious treatment of American Indian communities.

In its report to Congress, a task force said,
 “The removal of Indian children from their natural homes and tribal setting has been and continues to be a national crisis.”

The government-sanctioned removals were a wound for Native families and tribes that would be torn raw with each new generation.
Hirsch, along with two Congressional staffers, wrote and rewrote a bill to shield American Indian youth from being removed from their families and tribes. A culmination of what Hirsch describes as a huge grassroots effort spanning 11 years and involving thousands of people across the country, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed at the 11th hour, just before the 95th Congress would come to a close, on October 24, 1978.
“If we didn’t get it passed in the 95th,” Hirsch said, “I’m not sure it ever would have passed.” ICWA defined the political relationship between two sovereigns – tribes and states. It designated that tribes can and must act as parents for their children, just as states do with non-Native children, when biological parents cannot. And it required that preference be given to tribal communities when children must be removed from their homes.

But 40 years later, states still don’t fully understand ICWA. One judge described ICWA as the most ignored federal law in the history of this country. The federal government has no ICWA data reporting requirements in place.Caseworkers and attorneys have been reported as viewing ICWA compliance as optional. Notice to tribes that an Indian child has entered foster care has been delayed by as many as four years, tribes have said.

And just last week, a federal district court judge ruled that the law was unconstitutional, rendering the fate of ICWA uncertain. 

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The Manipulation and Distortion of Public Opinion to Overthrow #ICWA

Lost Children, adopted out

CITATION
Bual, Harman (2018) "Native American Rights & Adoption by Non-Indian Families: The Manipulation and Distortion of Public Opinion to Overthrow ICWA," American Indian Law Journal: Vol. 6 : Iss. 2 , Article 6.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/ailj/vol6/iss2/6 

Excerpt:

The public’s general lack of knowledge regarding the history of ICWA and the standards set up by ICWA allows for easy manipulation by adoption agencies and ICWA opponents. A lack of understanding and sensationalized media supports a negative image of Indian tribes that overshadows the protections offered by ICWA, and the improper behavior of adoption agencies and attorneys who encourage adoptive parents to go against the clear standards set out in ICWA.117 

This is a difficult situation to address, given the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Baby Veronica, because it fails to acknowledge the historical reasoning for ICWA and maintaining a relationship between an Indian child and its tribe.118 

However, the behavior of these adoption agencies and attorneys who are creating delays in the system, and actively working the system to get around ICWA statues, should face some sort of monetary fine. Fines would need to be determined on a case by case basis, but could be based on whether there were improper delay tactics, the length of time the litigation took due to improper delay tactics, and whether the adoption agency knew or had reason to know the child was an Indian. Policies surrounding the custody of children as a whole are inconsistent and create conflicting goals and procedural issues when applied.119 

To overcome these issues, it is necessary that both legislators and ICWA supporters find a common ground where the agencies responsible for determining a child’s membership status are able to do so in a timely manner and hold foster families and Indian families accountable if they fail to follow reunification plans set by these state agencies.

Despite the intent of Congress, state courts have continuously interpreted ICWA in a variety of ways that has created loopholes around the mandates.121 

Large cases in front of the Supreme Court of the United States has brought attention to ICWA on a national level.122 

However, ICWA is often portrayed as a set of rules that ignores the best interest of the Indian child in favor of satisfying the demands of Indian tribes who may not be capable of taking care of the Indian child as well as an already established home with an adoptive family.123 

This perception has been further manipulated within the media by ICWA opposition in an effort to dismantle ICWA.

The history and purpose of ICWA has been misinterpreted by courts applying it within custody cases of Indian children. For ICWA to be successful, it is necessary that states and courts identify

the child’s tribe and give proper notification to the tribes. ICWA was established to stabilize the growth of tribes that had diminished after decades of assimilation of tribal members into mainstream American society. Despite the set guidelines within ICWA, states apply ICWA differently within each court, which creates disproportionate protection to Indian children, parents, and tribes.124  

To combat improper application of ICWA it is necessary that clarification of ICWA is provided to state child welfare workers, adoption agencies, judges, and society. 

Media uses the emotional pull within ICWA adoption cases between Indian tribes and non-Indian adoptive families to undermine the protection given to tribes under ICWA and limit tribal rights.

Proper application of ICWA would prevent many of the cases being reported on by news media because many years of litigation would be avoided. And most importantly, the Indian child developing ties to a family the child should not have legally been placed with could be prevented because many years of litigation would be avoided. And most importantly, the Indian child developing ties to a family the child should not have legally been placed with could be prevented.

Use the search bar on this blog to find #ICWA and stories about lost children of the Indian Adoption Projects and Programs and 60s Scoop... Thousands of children were stolen by the govt's of Canada and the US and adopted out - this blog is about survivors.
 

Pivotal moment in Indian Country | Attack on #ICWA

Photo Courtesy National Indian Child Welfare Association

Published October 9, 2018

PORTLAND, Ore. —  On Monday, October 8,  2018 the National Indian Child Welfare Association, National Congress of American Indians, Association on American Indian Affairs and Native American Rights Fund released the following joint statement on last week Thursday's ruling by a federal district judge in northern Texas striking down the 40-year-old Indian Child Welfare Act.

Read the statement:

In a decision published by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was declared unconstitutional, jeopardizing the landmark legislation protecting tribal children.

This egregious decision ignores the direct federal government-to-government relationship and decades upon decades of precedent that have upheld tribal sovereignty and the rights of Indian children and families. Through 40 years of implementation, ICWA’s goal is to promote family stability and integrity. It continues to be the gold standard in child welfare policy.

While this disturbing ruling is a pivotal moment for Indian Country, we vehemently reject any opinion that separates Native children from their families and will continue to fight to uphold ICWA and tribal sovereignty.

National American Indian Organization Release Statement on Indian Child Welfare Act Case by Native News Online Staff

#HonorNativeLand

Partnership for Native Children Decries Anti-ICWA Decision

Calls judge’s ruling ‘an outlier, out of step with the law and constitutional jurisprudence’

The Partnership for Native Children strongly disagrees with and is disturbed by Judge O’Connor’s decision in Brackeen v. Zinke which has stricken down the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) four decades after it was enacted. This is the first decision of its kind, and is an outlier—out of step with the law and decades of constitutional jurisprudence.

With the support and guidance of a longstanding coalition of anti-ICWA activists, the plantiffs in Brackeen want to remove ICWA’s provisions that protect against removing Native children from their parents and culture, leaving unfettered access to Native children. Not content with that outcome, they wish to undermine the U.S. Constitution and centuries of established law by eradicating tribes’ Constitutionally-protected relationship with the United States government.

Although this decision is limited in application, it serves as a roadmap for other ICWA litigation intending to overturn ICWA and we should expect future litigation seeking to undermine tribal sovereignty and federal Indian law writ large.

Emboldened by the Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl decision in 2013, these anti-ICWA forces—led by the adoption industry, religious coalitions, and a conservative think tank—have spent years bringing forth suit after suit in courts throughout the country, sometimes even using identical briefs in different forums, all in the attempt to have ICWA declared unconstitutional. After losing each case, due in part to their outrageous contention that ICWA is a race-based law (it is not), they have finally found a judge in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas sympathetic to their arguments.

While they choose to ignore thousands of testimonials from Native families who assert that those who will be most hurt by this decisions are our most sacred and vulnerable children, the Partnership for Native Children stands with Indian Country and affirms that we will continue to fight for them. We support legal efforts to appeal this unprecedented decision. We will work tirelessly to demand the media cover these issues thoroughly and responsibly. And we will work closely with those children, families, and tribes who want their perspectives finally included in the national dialogue about the best interests of our children. Their voices have been ignored for far too long.

The Partnership for Native Children refuses to go back to those the days where tribal children were removed simply because of cultural misunderstandings, for financial gain, and due to pure prejudice. We also refuse to let extremist groups use our children as a tool to undermine the foundations of Indian law and tribal sovereignty.

The Partnership for Native Children remains unwavering in our commitment to defend the constitutionality of ICWA by all available means and will continue to work in support of tribes and Native people throughout the country to ensure that Native children, families, and tribes are protected.

Here is our press release.

source:

Partnership for Native Children PR on Texas ICWA Case by Matthew L.M. Fletcher

U.S. District Court Decision Puts Native American Children and Families at Risk

PRESS RELEASE

The California Tribal Families Coalition joined others nationwide in expressing disappointment over the ruling.

In an unprecedented ruling that threatens Native American children and families, U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor in the Northern District of Texas declared the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) unconstitutional in an opinion in Brackeen et. al. v. Zinke, filed October 4, 2018.  

While unnerving, attorneys fighting for ICWA say the decision is not applicable throughout the United States. Rather, it is limited in scope and will likely be stayed pending appeal. The decision from a U.S. District Court in Texas is not applicable in California. 

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is a 40-year old remedial statute that protects Indian children, families and tribes. The original complaint was filed by adoptive parents and supported by Texas, Indiana and Louisiana, and the decision is contrary to Congressional intent, the Constitution and decades of well-established Indian law.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, leading a bipartisan coalition of Attorneys General, filed an amicus brief in the case to defend the ICWA. ICWA sets specific child welfare rules designed to ensure that cases regarding abuse, neglect and adoption involving Native American children are handled in a culturally appropriate manner. 

“Those of us who were raised in Indian Country, those of us who raise our children on the reservations, those of us who know Indian families – we know that ICWA protects our children. This targeted and well-financed attack on ICWA only reminds tribes of the long and tortured history we have endured in the United States,” Robert Smith, chairman of the California Tribal Families Coalition  and the Pala Band of Mission Indians.

About the California Tribal Families Coalition.

Comprised of tribes and tribal leaders from across the state, the California Tribal Families Coalition’s mission is to promote and protect the health, safety and welfare of tribal children and families, which are inherent tribal governmental functions and are at the core of tribal sovereignty and tribal governance. For information, please visit https://www.caltribalfamilies.org

Contact: Delia M. Sharpe, CTFC Executive Director, 916-583-8289 ordelia.sharpe@caltribalfamilies.org

California Tribal Families Coalition Press Release on Texas ICWA Case by Matthew L.M. Fletcher

More on #ICWA

Tribes’ Statement re: Brackeen v. Zinke Decision

Posted on October 5, 2018 by Matthew L.M. Fletcher

STATEMENT REGARDING RULING STRIKING DOWN THE INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT

We strongly disagree and are deeply disappointed with Judge O’Connor’s decision in Brackeen v. Zinke in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas striking down the Indian Child Welfare Act, four decades after it was enacted. We remain steadfast in our commitment to defend the constitutionality of ICWA by all available means for one simple reason: If ICWA is struck down in whole or in part, the victims will be our children and our families, Native children and Native families.

The apparent goal of Plaintiffs’ litigation is an extreme one — to separate children from their parents. Before ICWA, as many as one-third of all tribal children were forcibly removed from their families and their communities by state governments. Thorough and objective analysis of the systematic removal of Indian children from Indian homes found many removals were wholly unjustified. These policies devastated tribal communities and we refuse to go back to those darker days. We are heartened by the support of so many states that stand shoulder to shoulder with us in this litigation to protect families.

We are in consultation with our legal counsel and exploring all available options.  Rest assured, we consider the trial level decision today as one part of a long process. In the interim, we will seek a stay of the decision until higher courts have an opportunity to review it.  We will continue to work in state courts throughout the country to ensure the protections of ICWA for Native children, families, and tribes. We strongly believe that, in the end, our rights protected by the Indian Child Welfare Act will be affirmed and reinforced.   

• Principal Chief Bill John Baker, Cherokee Nation
• Chairman Robert Martin, Morongo Band of Mission Indians
• Chairman Tehassi Hill, Oneida Nation
• President Fawn Sharp, Quinault Indian Nation

Judge Abby Abinanti Is Fighting for Her Tribe—and for a Better Justice System

Once considered illegitimate, Native American peacemaking courts offer a model for criminal-justice reform.
Judge Abby Abinanti is one of a growing number of tribal judges nationwide incorporating traditional culture into their courtrooms, with the dual aim of rehabilitating individuals and providing justice to people often failed by the regular criminal-justice system. Abinanti, whose court was recently described in a federal assessment as “extremely fair and balanced in its rulings,” is more likely to ask defendants to devise their own ways to atone for a crime or settle a dispute than to slap them with fines or incarceration. As Abinanti explains, “I’m looking at: How did we resolve things before our cultural interruption, when invasion occurred? We were village people, and we sat around and had discussions. My purpose is to help you think up how to make it right if you made a mistake…. For me, jail is banishment. It’s the last resort.”

READ: Judge Abby Abinanti Is Fighting for Her Tribe—and for a Better Justice System | The Nation

First Nations child advocate says child welfare system ‘eats up’ Indigenous kids

October 1, 2018 by Red Power Media, Staff

Cora Morgan, First Nations Family Advocate at The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC) in Winnipeg, Monday, February 22, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods

WINNIPEG — A Manitoba First Nations children’s advocate says the child welfare system “eats up” Indigenous children and is designed to keep their families at a disadvantage.

Cora Morgan, with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, told the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women that the system is set up to apprehend children, not to support families.

“Any challenges that our families are faced with, it’s used against them instead of them being offered support. It victimizes our families,” she said Monday.

“A lot of these things are just perpetual. You can find five or six generations of a family where their children have been taken.”

The inquiry is holding hearings in Winnipeg this week and is expected to focus on child welfare.

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